Guns, drugs seized from smoke shop owner's home

Kevin Bay of Columbia was arrested Monday morning at his residence on Old Plank Road after the Boone County Sheriff Department seized about 100 firearms and a large amount of illegal drugs. Bay had an outstanding warrant in Stoddard County, where he was charged with the sale of synthetic cannibinoid.¦ COURTESY OF BOONE COUNTRY SHERRIF'S DEPARTMENT

funny how they searched his home a day after he had to take all of the K2 out of his shop. I'd imagine a decent lawyer can get him off, get his money and guns returned etc. As for the delivery of the substance.....it wasn't illegal until Sunday, so how exactly can they charge him if the law wasn't yet in effect? Legalize pot and we won't have any issues like this again. People wont be using cruddy chemically sprayed herbs that have the same affect. A lil weed never hurt anyone. K2 on the other hand has. Send Paul to Irag...with a fat bag of bocomo dew to keep him company:)

Yep, it is easy to distinguish between a search conducted by the Boone County Sheriff's Department and the Columbia Police Department. Notice when the Boone County Sheriff's Department does a raid, nobody gets Tasered, no dogs are killed, nobody goes to the hospital, injuries and incidents are kept to a minimum. And this guy had "several" firearms to boot!

IF the CPD would have raided this house, this man might not have survivied.

I am trying to recall any incidents that made the news at all when the BCSD conducted these types of raids in the past; and I can not recall any at all.....?

The apology was made in jest. Regardless of their involvement in this raid I think Burton and his crew are involved in frequent criminal activities; and yes I will take the low road by taking a shot at Burton every chance I get until he is out of a position of authority in Columbia and replaced by someone who actually cares about protecting and serving the citizens of our fine city.

Rick,

You make a good point. This is an interesting difference between the Whitworth raid and the Bay raid. Both raids have issues concerning the validity and motivation behind the warrant; however the Whitworth raid is alone in the issue concerning the actual execution of the raid. It appears that the BCSD handled it like professionals while CPD tends to handle these things like children who know there are no repercussions for their actions.

I can sympathize that the BCSD are just following through on instructions from a judge and prosecutor. However, it would be nice to see someone in law enforcement stand up to this kind of thuggery and refuse to execute such a warrant.

This raid was about the same thing that 99% of raids are about; civil forfeiture, aka an armed home invasion for economic gain.

Jack, I think we agree on most of this. I think we can all see a difference between how raids are conducted by the CPD and the BCSD.

Where I may differ here, and may be taking an "unpopular stance" here is in the area of asset forfeiture. I don't have a problem with using asset forfeiture statutes in cases where a person is clearly breaking the law and violating felony statutes to accrue large "ill gotten gains". I think asset forfeiture statutes are a tool, that if used properly does in fact save the taxpayers money by better equipping our Law Enforcement Agencies with the tools that they need to protect and serve us.

I believe that asset forfeiture statutes can be abused and that is where I have a problem with them being used by Law Enforcement. I believe that asset forfeiture statutes should not be used to target individuals that might be culpable in low level, misdemeanor crimes just so a particular Law Enforcement Agency can gain some "nice toys". Here with Mr. Bay, I don't believe that happened. Guns and Illegal Narcotics together in the same residence is potentially a very serious situation. In some states, the combination of guns and illegal narcotics warrants federal prosecution. This many firearms coupled with the type of money that was seized and the illegal narcotics adds up to some "red flags" against Mr. Bay. This many firearms in a residence with illegal narcotics is potentially a safety issue for Law Enforcement and the nearby citizens in close proximity to the residence where the firarms are located.

I am just wondering here; did Mr. Bay have a firearms collector's license? If not, what in the world was he doing with almost 100 guns? As much as the News Media ran stories about these new cannaboid statutes going into effect Sunday night, didn't Mr. Bay know that the material he possessed became illegal to possess Monday morning? Due to the timing of the raid, I'd say that he may have been under surveillance, OR the person with him at the time of the raid may have been an undercover officer or an informant? The raid was timed in such a way to catch Mr. Bay with illegal narcotics in less than 24 hours after the law went into effect, and it had to take a lot of coordination because it was multi-agency and multi-jurisdictional. So, I'd say the raid was planned and executed rather well. All Mr. Bay would have had to have done was dispose of the material Sunday afternoon that became illegal to possess Sunday at midnight.

On it's face, I'd say that Law Enforcement did nothing wrong here. It would appear that Law Enforcement simply did their job with impeccable timing...

The warrant was not about him possessing anything so the law going into effect Monday is a moot point. The warrant is from Stoddard county. The prosecutor there is trying to get him on distribution charges from selling the stuff well before the new law went into effect.

There are rumors circling the interwebs that the police did not confiscate any k2 from the home and that they only took cash, guns and gold (hearsay reports from Bay's daughter and lawyer). Only time will tell what is actually going down here but between the shady prosecutor in Stoddard, the multiple requests for witness immunity, and the confusion over what was actually taken from the home things seem fishy at best. This looks like another case of the law enforcement seeing an easy mark for a quick pay day.

Either way I imagine this will end up the way these things usually do; the police will get their pay day and the citizens will be out a fortune trying a case that is pointless and fighting the inevitable lawsuit.

Ricky, I don't believe he would need a license if those are not exotic guns. The number may seem high, but I have a friend with well over 50 guns the last I checked. He had a C&R license for a while (basically so he could buy 50+ year-old guns direct from dealers). He was also single and had lots of money left over from a well-paying legal job, so he would buy an old gun or two every month, clean it, and go shooting. Just a good ol' boy basically with some fun older rifles. I haven't seen any indication that Mr. Bay is other than that when it comes to his weapons.

As for the drug charges, I believe K2 was made illegal in the previous session of the legislature and they revisited that along with "bath salts" this past session. My suspicion is that the Stoddard County charges, if valid, are related to K2 and not the re-engineered chemical that was used after the ancient Chinese secret in K2 was banned.

If what you are saying is true, I'd certainly have some reservations about the raid. Not in regards to BCSD, but certainly with Stoddard County. I believe that Boone County would have just looked at the warrant, saw a legal warrant and proceeded from there. Kind of hard to fault them for that.

I think the planning was probably not done by Boone County. The timing seems kinda "interesting" to me.

I try to be objective about Law Enforcement. Although I will admit that I am highly skeptical of Law Enforecement these days, and I am certainly not one of the "sheeple" that are afraid to speak out, and will just go along with anything and find ways to defend Law Enforcement no matter what they do.. I still try to be fair and objective. I have a problem with not giving the BCSD the benefit of the doubt becuase I don't see the same pattern in how they conduct theirselves as I do with the CPD.

Little story here. About 5 years ago I had to serve some federal subpoenas on the Boone County Jail Administrator, the Former Sheriff of Boone County, and the County Attorney. My client was suing Boone County. Well I served every subpoena but one, and that was on Ted Boehm, and the reason for that was because he was out of state on vacation. Can't blame him, he needed a vacation after he retired. So, I told my client that when Mr. Boehm got back I'd serve him. My client, who was on medication for some personality problems though that Ted Boehm was avoiding service and thought that Dwayne Carey was "covering" for him (this simply was NOT true). So, my client "missed taking his meds" one day and decided to call the Boone County SHeriff's Department and threaten to "kick everyone's butt there starting with the sheriff's secretary and working his way up to the Sheriff" because they were all hiding the former sheriff from his Process Server. Well, Sheriff Carey called me up the next day and just wanted to talk to me about my client, and I explained that he had "personality problems", he was on medication for them, and he may have missed a day or just not taken his meds. Now Sheriff Carey would have been completely within his rights to get a warrant for my client for communicating threats and running my client through the system. But once Sheriff Carey understood what happened, he just wrote up a report, and "let it ride". He did not get a warrant, or cause the man any problems at all. That is where I walked away with quite a bit of respect for Sheriff Carey. He just saw no reason to cause a person more problems than they already had over what really amounted to a minor incident. In my opinion, that is intelligent policing.

So, I am willing to give the BCSD the benefit of the doubt, comparing the BCSD and the CPD is like comparing apples and oranges, in my opinion.